Winning in marketing comes down to a few critical elements. For seasonal businesses, whoever is able to get to capacity the fastest usually wins. Having a good marketing calendar is crucial to achieving this. Looking back at your own history, have you ever missed a season either by being underprepared in hiring employees fast enough or maybe you turned on your lead generation engines too late? If you haven’t, you’re one of the lucky ones!
There’s a delicate balance between marketing and capacity that every home service business must be aware of. Too many leads with not enough techs and you’re booked out too far causing a dip in closing rates. Not enough leads and too many techs causes turnover. Your business is like a fulcrum with one side being sales and marketing with the other being operations capacity. Your job as the leader of your organization is to manage the flow of leads and the parameters of capacity.
Ordinary vs. extraordinary marketers: Ordinary entrepreneurs react to demand and change. Extraordinary entrepreneurs anticipate, capitalize and extend their seasons. They take advantage of their database, provide excellent service, have a brand their competition strives to be and they always take complete ownership of their plan and company vision.
Marketing Calendar
A reactive marketing plan is guaranteed to slow your growth. Over the past 10+ years, I’ve studied thousands of home service businesses and seen first hand the difference in taking a proactive approach to marketing and lead generation.
- You know the seasonality of your industry
- You’re the expert in the services you offer
- You’ve set your goals and know what it takes to hit them.
Leading vs. Trailing metrics: A leading metric is projecting future performance while a training metric is analyzing past performance. Your marketing plan and company budgets are leading metrics. These tools are what set the pace for your season. Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a winning marketing calendar for your business.
If you’re a visual person, I have a three part video series going over every aspect of this blog. Like & Subscribe!
Video #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lg9-COsdI
Video #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN31sz6yALI
Video #3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZX5Bf54eQ0
Step-by-Step guide to building your marketing calendar: https://clickcallsell.com/calendar/
- Benchmark where you are today: Knowing your strengths and weaknesses as an individual and entrepreneur will help set the standard for where to start, where to hire and where to spend your time. Answer these questions about your business
- Casting Vision: Now that you know where you are today including your strengths, weaknesses and where to start, it’s time to cast vision for tomorrow. Where do you want to be in the next 5 years, 3 years, 1 years, 1 quarter and 1 week? Your company vision should be shared with everyone so it’s not a surprise when we land at the destination. It also makes celebrating wins better! Answer the following questions:
- Write down your sales goal for the next 12 months
- How many customers do you have in your database?
- How many of those customers will use your service in the next 12 months?
- What % of your business will be from referrals?
- What is your Average Sale Price (ASP) for the upcoming year?
- Formula: Total revenue / Total work orders
- The Tactics: Fill in the blanks and complete your marketing calendar. In order to know exactly how much you need to spend on leads to hit your goal, answer the following questions.
- What is your target or expected Cost Per Lead (CPL)?
- What is your target or expected Closing %?
- Using the marketing calendar document, you’ll have a tool that does all this math for you.
When building your marketing calendar follow these steps:
- Start with your existing database: I like to start with 1% of my sales for existing clients and referral gifts.
- Work from the bottom of the funnel up, maximizing your spend in each category to find the point of diminishing returns.
- Experiment with new medias and lead generation tactics when demand is at its highest. If something doesn’t work when demand is at its peak, it’s probably not going to work.
- Consider whether something is not working is due to the offer, the media or the time of the year.
- Never stop Boots on the Ground Marketing
- Build your marketing calendar ahead of time and stay proactive.
